The Walls Have Eyes by Clare B. Dunkle

“Yeah, that’s right,” he said. “I used to hope she’d come back, but she didn’t.”
    â€œSo did I,” Mom said. “For a while.”
    â€œThen the Owner won’t be back here, either?”
    Mom looked at the room, with its end tables but no couch or armchairs and its two clean windows and three horrendous ones. Assiduous sweeping with bundles of weeds had revealed a floor of sunny caramel-colored tiles.
    â€œNo, he won’t. This house is ours now. I just wish I could figure out how to get a new sofa.”
    So Martin ran down the slope and across the tree-lined street to wash off his treasure in the pond. The glass candy was larger than life, and bolder, too. One piece was ringed with stripes of cobalt blue and lemon yellow. It had bright blue twists at the ends. One had orange ends and a cherry-colored center that turned the landscape crimson when he looked through it. Another was green glass swirled with what Martin swore were flecks of pure gold.
    But best of all was the bowl itself. Dozens of small, round, frilly glass blossoms of every conceivable color crowded together beneath a layer of thick, clear glass. They looked like nothing he had seen before. They looked like flowers in an underwater garden.
    Martin could only stare at the bowl. He knew no words ornate enough to describe its beauty. Beside him, Chip’s rapt expression mirrored his own.
    â€œ
Martin!
”
    Dad was stomping down the pond bank toward them, his face puffy with anger. “Stop ignoring me! What are you doing here? You’re scaring the fish!”
    â€œNothing. Just . . . nothing.” Martin instinctively curled his hands around his precious find.
    â€œThen get back to the house and get to work. You’ve got cleaning to do.” And Dad stalked off down the muddy shoreline.
    Martin ran back to the house.
    â€œDon’t slam the door,” Mom called reproachfully. “You’re scattering the dust.”
    Martin stashed his beautiful bowl in a kitchen cabinet and then burst into the room where she was cleaning.
    â€œI hate this!” he yelled. “I never wanted him to come here. We’d be doing great without him; you’d be painting pictures and stuff, and I’d be learning great things about new bugs. But look, he’s got us all scared just like he is, and stuck in another house, wiping counters and looking at everything through a bunch of dirty windows.” Anger swelled inside him, all his rage over Dad sending Martin’s little sister away to die. “I hate him! I do. I wish he hadn’t come.”
    Mom stood still, looking away from him. She said, “I don’t know why you’d say such a thing about your father.”
    I know why, Martin thought. I know a whole packet car full of reasons why. I could tell you why, and then you’d hate him too.
    â€œAll I can say,” Mom went on, “is that if your father weren’there, I don’t think I could stand it. Maybe you’d be having the time of your life, but I would be very unhappy.”
    Martin ran out of the house and slammed the door again. He noticed that Chip caught it with a back foot to keep it from making a noise, and for a second, his quarrel even extended to his dog. Dad was taking it easy on the bank, slowly reeling in an empty line. Martin charged up to him, and the surprise on Dad’s face must have equaled the fury on his.
    â€œShe doesn’t know!” Martin shouted. “She thinks you’re so great, taking care of us and all, but that’s only because she doesn’t know. I could tell her, and then she’d hate you too. And it would serve you right!”
    â€œKnow what?”
    Dad’s face looked pinched and cautious and silly, like the old man he would be one day, like the ridiculous spectacle he was without his clothes on. Martin felt slimy all over. He threw himself down on the bank next to Dad’s tackle box and